"Some words are not written to be read, they're written so the writer will not drown."
The moonlight fell in thin silver slices across the vanity table, catching the edge of the scroll she had just unrolled.
Xu Feiran sat still, unmoving, her brush poised above the rice paper like a breath she hadn't finished exhaling.
For over an hour she had been writing and rewriting the same opening line.
To His Highness the Crown Prince—
It sounded too cold. Too formal.
I hope this letter finds you well—
Too distant. Too foreign.
She dipped the brush again, the scent of ink rising like something rich and heavy from a life she hadn't yet touched.
Eventually, she began writing without thinking. The characters curved and bloomed under her fingers, restrained but elegant.
Your Highness,
I trust the arrangements for the western provincial tour are proceeding smoothly. I have reviewed the ceremonial schedule as requested, and find no amendments necessary at this time.
If Your Highness will permit a further note: the Crown Princess may be ornamental, but she is not immaterial. A voice once ignored forgets how to speak. A root never watered forgets how to bloom.
If there is a purpose to this union beyond the comfort of ceremony, I would like to understand it. If there is not, I would still prefer the truth.
With due respect,
Xu Feiran.
When she finished, she did not sign it with her seal.
She folded the letter once, neatly, and handed it to Yue'er with no instruction.
Yue'er read her face and said only, "I will see that it reaches him."
The next morning, a letter was returned.
Unfolded by Yue'er's hand, it revealed a single page of calligraphy.
The characters were beautiful. Perfect, even. They moved across the page like strokes of a master painter, not a husband.
There was no greeting. No signature. No address.
Only a poem:
Ink on silk, red as breath,
Fades before it can be read.
A blossom falls when no one sees—
Still, the wind remembers.
Feiran stared at it.
"That's all?" Yue'er asked cautiously.
Feiran nodded.
"He didn't answer your question."
Feiran said nothing.
Instead, she rose, walked to the edge of the courtyard, and sat by the railing facing the plum trees.
They remained unchanged. Stubbornly bare.
Yue'er followed a moment later, carrying a soft wool shawl which she placed carefully over Feiran's shoulders.
"Perhaps he is trying," she offered gently. "In his way."
Feiran looked down at the paper again.
It was exquisite.
Perfectly empty.
That afternoon, the silence pressed down harder than usual.
The palace hummed in its usual rhythm—maidens giggling faintly in the distance, attendants passing like shadows in the corridors, the occasional call of a crane from the lake beyond the walls.
But within her quarters, nothing moved.
Feiran began to pace.
Her feet traced the same line between the painted screen and the low table where the letter now lay, beside the box containing Meilin's hairpin and the unopened pouch of candied lotus seeds she had never touched.
Each item a kind of message.
Each one more confusing than the last.
Eventually, she took up her brush again and began to write in her personal journal, a habit she had once kept as a girl and abandoned after her engagement.
But the words wouldn't come.
Instead, she found herself sketching the shape of a branch. Then a blossom. Then another. Each one carefully inked into the blank space like a memory she was trying to place.
A knock at the outer screen startled her.
She looked up.
Yue'er stepped inside, cheeks slightly flushed from the cold.
"A delivery," she said. "From the royal library."
Feiran frowned. "I did not request any volumes."
"The courier said it was by request of His Highness."
Feiran blinked. "Books?"
Yue'er handed her a small stack. Bound scrolls and thin volumes, none of them marked with titles on the cover.
Feiran took them, puzzled.
"Did he say why?"
"No," Yue'er said, "but the courier also said…" She hesitated. "That one of them was a 'mirror.'"
Feiran unrolled the top scroll.
It was poetry.
Old. Tang Dynasty.
She turned to the next.
Court records. Royal ceremonial rites for empresses. Detailed instructions for how a Crown Princess was to behave during court observances.
Feiran raised an eyebrow.
The third volume was thinner. Older. A personal diary?
No—it was a transcription of correspondence between a long-dead empress and her husband, an emperor known for his silence and strategic marriages.
The entries were short. Scattered.
He never answered my questions, only returned verses. I think he feared language more than death.
But in his silence I began to understand the shape of what he withheld. And sometimes… that was worse.
I would have preferred cruelty to beauty.
Feiran stared at the line.
She closed the book slowly.
"A mirror," she said aloud.
"Your Highness?" Yue'er asked.
"He sent me a mirror made of other women's words."
That night, she returned to her garden bench, wrapped in two cloaks.
The wind was colder.
Her fingers trembled slightly as she traced the carved railing, the wood worn smooth by decades of hands she would never know.
She thought of the Crown Prince, sitting somewhere in his own wing. Perhaps reading. Perhaps writing. Perhaps forgetting she existed.
She wondered what he wanted her to see in those books.
Was it an apology? An admission?
Or just another performance of depth?
A sound behind her—soft, too soft for a guard's step.
She turned.
The figure stood in the archway, mostly shadowed. But tall. Still. Familiar.
Her breath caught.
Not the Crown Prince.
Commander Wen.
She stood quickly.
"Commander," she said, surprised.
He bowed low. "Forgive the intrusion, Your Highness. I come at His Highness's request."
"He sends his requests in the night now?"
"Only when they cannot be delayed."
She studied him.
His face remained neutral, but his knuckles were tight where his hands folded.
"What is it?"
"There is… concern. A foreign guest is expected in court tomorrow. A noble from the Western borders. There is reason to believe he is sympathetic to factions not aligned with the Crown."
She blinked. "And this concerns me?"
"He requested to be seated near the Crown Princess during the ceremony."
Feiran's mouth pressed into a line.
"A test."
"Perhaps."
"Or a warning."
Wen didn't speak.
Feiran turned back toward the trees. The wind had died down, but the cold had not.
After a long silence, she asked, "Do you believe poetry can be used to control a woman?"
Wen paused. "I believe beauty can be a weapon."
She nodded. "I believe the same."
He bowed again, more deeply.
And this time, before he left, he said softly:
"Your Highness. Not all silences are permission. Some are wounds."
Then he was gone.
Feiran remained on the bench long after the cold began to ache in her knees.
She did not go inside.
Not yet.
The poem the Crown Prince had sent her remained folded in her sleeve, close to the place where her pulse beat against her skin.
She had once thought silence was emptiness.
Now she suspected it was something worse.
A room filled with words you're not allowed to say.